Since powered flight began, the need to eliminate runways has compounded substantially. Airports are the overall bottlenecks in aeronautical transportation and they are taking an ever increasing amount of time to drive to and from, parking, wait in ever increasing lines, baggage portage and claims, etc.
Vertical takeoff and landing capability is also a most sought after capability in military missions having a variety of special benefits. Historically this has been handled almost entirely by the helicopter and while the helicopter has been an indispensable asset their drawbacks are many leaving yet again a need for a solution.
While there have been various forms of aircraft that do not need runways to operate, they usually have such major drawbacks that they are very limited in their applications.
Helicopters have the obvious open rotor threat and corresponding noise; require an expert to fly with both hands and feet; undesirable vibrations; require a tail rotor to counter the imparted torque to the hanging fuselage; and are complex, expensive to fly and maintain. Further, helicopters require the weight and expense of specialized landing gear. Additionally, helicopters usually only have one power source without back-up or parachute options.
Gyrocopters and gyroplanes, while not needing a tail rotor still have an open rotor and still yield most of the helicopter's drawbacks.
Tilt rotor is currently exceedingly expensive, also noisy, complex to control, operate and maintain. Very few tilt-rotor aircraft even exist at present time.
Thrust vectoring, the ability of an aircraft or other vehicle to direct the thrust from its main engine(s) or jets, can only be reasonably considered for military applications as they are deafening, profoundly expensive, and have huge heat signatures among others.
Another category is that of “powered lift”. According to the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) categorization, “Powered-lift means a heavier-than-air aircraft capable of vertical takeoff, vertical landing, and low speed flight that depends principally on engine-driven lift devices or engine thrust for lift during these flight regimes and on nonrotating airfoil(s) for lift during horizontal flight.”. 14 C.F.R. 1.1. However, since the FAA recognized this new category, few, if any, feasible aircrafts for this category have been developed, either for the military or civilian application.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an aircraft capable of VTOL as well as effective forward flight (not necessarily “low speed” flight as categorized in the FAA definition of powered-lift) that overcomes the above-described limitations and deficiencies with other aircraft.